The Achaeans besieged Troy for nine years. This part of the war is the least developed among surviving sources, which prefer to talk about events in the last year of the war. After the initial landing the army was gathered in its entirety again only in the tenth year. Thucydides deduces that this was due to lack of money. They raided the Trojan allies and spent time farming the Thracian peninsula.
the army that “bumrushed Troy” was farming around Troy 🤷
The homeric epics are not history. The section of the epic cycle that details the story of the trojan horse is missing - we have only references from other texts. So unfortunately you’re not going to get a detailed explanation of a fictional event from a non-existent text.
It’s incredibly likely that a coalition under a mycenaean era leader did intervene militarally in wilusa/ilios/troy, probably multiple times. But the poetry that survives incorporates elements from different eras of history and can’t be understood as a factual account of events.
(Not a historian, just an enthusiast with an ancient history degree)
The explanation I was given at one time (don’t know if it was BS, sounded plausible tho) is that the horse was supposed to be an effigy to the gods to ensure safe travel home. The Troyans knew this, and the Greeks knew that the Troyans knew this and would attempt to capture the effigy to deny the Greeks the gods’ blessing.
while waiting for a historian to answer i would just like to remind you that you’re writing about a period when the world population is estimated to be around 100,000,000.
armies depicted in the movies you saw are exaggerated
Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to walk on land after stepping off a ship would be the first to die. Thus even the leading Greeks hesitated to land. Finally, Protesilaus, leader of the Phylaceans, landed first. Odysseus had tricked him, in throwing his own shield down to land on, so that while he was first to leap off his ship, he was not the first to land on Trojan soil. Hector killed Protesilaus in single combat, though the Trojans conceded the beach. In the second wave of attacks, Achilles killed Cycnus, son of Poseidon.
🤣
Though he sent breastplates to Agamemnon and promised to send 50 ships, he sent only one real ship, led by the son of Mygdalion, and 49 ships made of clay. Idomeneus was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae’s war against Troy, but only as a co-commander, which he was granted. The last commander to arrive was Achilles, who was then 15 years old.
Following a sacrifice to Apollo, a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow’s nest in a plane tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. Calchas interpreted this as a sign that Troy would fall in the tenth year of the war.
When the Achaeans left for the war, they did not know the way, and accidentally landed in Mysia, ruled by King Telephus, son of Heracles, who had led a contingent of Arcadians to settle there. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who had killed Thersander. Because the wound would not heal, Telephus asked an oracle, “What will happen to the wound?” The oracle responded, “he that wounded shall heal”. The Achaean fleet then set sail and was scattered by a storm. Achilles landed in Skyros and married Deidamia. A new gathering was set again in Aulis.
Telephus went to Aulis, and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Agamemnon to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear that had inflicted the wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed. Telephus then showed the Achaeans the route to Troy.
The Achaean forces are described in detail in the Catalogue of Ships, in the second book of the Iliad. They consisted of 28 contingents from mainland Greece, the Peloponnese, the Dodecanese islands, Crete, and Ithaca, comprising 1186 pentekonters, ships with 50 rowers. Thucydides says that according to tradition there were about 1200 ships, and that the Boeotian ships had 120 men, while Philoctetes’ ships only had the fifty rowers, these probably being maximum and minimum. These numbers would mean a total force of 70,000 to 130,000 men. Another catalogue of ships is given by the Bibliotheca that differs somewhat but agrees in numbers. Some scholars have claimed that Homer’s catalogue is an original Bronze Age document, possibly the Achaean commander’s order of operations. Others believe it was a fabrication of Homer.
The horse wasn’t necessarily historical. It could have been an allegory or some historians may have been confused about war terminology of siege engines.
As for the sailors hiding? Look at a map of where Troy is. It’s just inside the Dardanelles which is a strait linking the Aegean and Black Seas. The navy could have waited in the Aegean and sailed in at a predetermined time.
